Warmachine comeback!

So, after a post-GenCon hiatus, the Usual Suspects have been clamoring for a bit of Warmachine. After feeling a bit burned out on the game, I'm trying to try something a little different from my old Severius and 2 Revengers assassination list. The game ran a little late, so there were a few tactical mistakes, but for the most part, it was back to what I originally enjoyed about Warmachine- tight tactical play and tense fights.

Protectorate Vs. Cygnar (Martha), 35 points, 'Caster Kill

Protectorate Force: High Exemplar Kreoss, Heirophant, Revenger, Crusader, Vanquisher, 6 Knights Exemplar, 5 Exemplar Bastions, 4 Choir, Knight Exemplar Seneschal.

Cygnar Force: Commander Coleman Stryker, Squire, Lancer, Thunderhead, Gunmage Captain Adept, Journeyman Warcaster, 3 Stormsmith Stormcallers, 6 Sword Knights, 10 Storm Guard

The table was set up "competitively", but we ended up fairly symmetrical, with a bit of a road running down the center. This was where most of the bloodshed was going to take place, with a bit more right around the church.

Turn 1 was pretty uneventful for both sides. I went first, with most of my army advancing and Kreoss setting up a couple of upkeeps- Lamentation on himself, and Defenders Ward on the Knights Exemplar, preparing them for a flank run towards the Sword Knights. Martha's force did much the same thing- Stryker set up Arcane Shield on the Stormguard and Blur on the Lancer, to buy it a turn safe from the Vanquisher shelling it, while the Journeyman Warcaster gave the Sword Knights his own Arcane Shield.


Turn 2 started a little bit of violence. The Choir set up the Vanquisher for a fire mission with a little Hymn of Battle, his Flame Belcher killing off 3 of the Storm Guard. The Crusader and Bastions advanced, preparing to meet the remaining Storm Guard head-on, while the Knights, Seneschal, and Revenger continued to position themselves.

The Cygnarans had a bit more going on. The Stormsmiths set up a nice chain of electrocutions on the Knights Exemplar, but only actually managed to kill one of them for their trouble. Stryker attempted to Earthquake the Bastions, but failed (forgetting the ability of the Squire to re-roll a casting roll once per turn). The Storm Guard charged into the still-standing Bastions, killing 3 of the 5, thanks to Sanguine Bond allowing the ones next in line to be hit to be killed instead, minimizing the impact of the Storm Guard. The Gun Mage Captain Adept took a potshot at the Vanquisher, but only hit it for two points, only managing to make it angry.


Going into Turn 3, the Menites were getting ready to bring some pain. The Vanquisher obliterated the Gun Mage Captain Adept with a well placed Flame Belcher shot, smearing his remains all over the underbrush in the copse of trees he was attempting to hide in, while the Crusader smashed a pair of Storm Guard into the sand with his Inferno Mace. He probably only really needed one focus, if any. The Bastions failed to hit anything, probably too busy laughing at the two warjacks massively over-killing their targets. The Seneschal dropped one more Storm Guard, while the Exemplars split their charges amongst the Stormsmiths, completely (and hilariously) destroying them. Old men are not well-equipped to tangle with the finest soldiers in the Protectorate.

Cygnar's response was fairly quick in coming. The Sword Knights managed to kil two of the Knights Exemplar, while Stryker cast Snipe on the Thunderhead, allowing it to zap the Crusader for five points of damage.

Turn 4 was the clear turning point of the game. Dropping all of his upkeep spells and only allocating one point to the Vanquisher, keeping the rest for himself, Kreoss activated his feat, knocking down all of the Cygnarans but Stryker, his Squire, and the Journeyman Warcaster. A blast of Cleansing Fire killed a pair of Storm Guard, while Purification stripped the Sword Knights of their Arcane Shield and the Thunderhead of Snipe. The Bastions and Crusader handily saw off the helpless Storm Guard, as the Knight Exemplar Seneschal took a run (and a Smite) at the Thunderhead, but not hitting him hard enough to knock him into Commander Stryker. The Knights Exemplar tried striking back at the Sword Knights, but even knocked down they were only able to kill two of them.

Reeling from Kreoss's feat turn, the Cygnarans spent this round mostly in damage control mode. The Thunderhead and Lancer each spent focus to shake off their knockdowns, with the Thunderhead managing to zap Kreoss with a 6-point bolt of lightning. Stryker himself managed to hit the Crusader with Arcane Bolt, splash damage hitting the Bastions. The Journeyman Warcaster re-cast Arcane Shield onto the Sword Knights, who then failed to damage the enraged Knights Exemplar.

The fifth turn was the Protectorate's best shot at bringing down Stryker. With an open charge lane due to the Thunderhead ignoring him, he bore down on Commander Stryker, managing to pummel him for 15 points of damage, not quite enough to bring him down, even with the slam taking him straight into the Squire. The Revenger moved to screen Kreoss from the Thunderhead, allowing the High Exemplar to channel a couple of Immolates into it, not doing much damage, but managing to light it on fire. The Bastions charged the Thunderhead, doing a bit of damage, while the Vanquisher took a shot at the Lancer, blowing its shield arm off. The Crusader advanced towards Stryker, while the Knights Exemplar only killed a single Sword Knight.

Another damage control turn for Cygnar, the Thunderhead lucked out on his Fire roll in turn 5, the flames going out without doing any damage. The Sword Knights finally got the best of the Knights Exemplar, but they were still far from the rest of the fight. The Thunderhead managed to catch both the Bastions and the Revenger with an Energy Pulse, for a single point of damage to each, but then crushed one Bastion with a Shock Fist attack. Stryker cut the Seneschal in half for daring to hit him, but again forgot to activate his feat.

Round 6 was really the end. The Crusader beat the Lancer into scrap, while the Vanquisher, aiming for Stryker and missing because of his wooded cover, blew up the Squire. The remaining Bastion managed to destroy the Thunderhead's right arm. Even with it in combat, Kreoss managed to light the Thunderhead on fire again before the Revenger moved to engage it, keeping it from making a run at Kreoss at the buzzer. With the Thunderhead burning up during her Maintenance Phase, Martha surrendered at the start of turn 6.


There were a couple of key mistakes this game (Does everyone forget Stryker's feat?), but overall it was pretty damned close until Kreoss's feat turn cracked the midfield open. The Storm Guard were fairly brutal, though not nearly as dangerous against the tough Bastions as I'm used to them being against softer infantry. The Bastions' ability to move damage around in the squad is much more interesting than I'd thought at first glance- it's not just about keeping more of the squad alive longer, it can very effectively prevent the enemy from having targets to hit in the first place, especially heavy hitters like the Storm Guard. This game did do what I needed it to- remind me that Warmachine is actually a game worth playing occasionally, rather than just a few hundred dollars worth of models sitting in a dusty case. I also just picked up the new Privateer token set, which may merit a review of it's own.

GenCon 2010- Day 4

Day 4 was pretty much just a pack up and go sort of day, with a little bit of final purchasing before getting back in the car for a ride home.

There was one relevant detail, though. I had missed it initially, but one of the guys from the Clan Grand Melee messaged me on Twitter, looking to meet me. Turns out, one of the line developers that wasn't at GenCon saw my angry tweet about the event, and wanted to try to make amends. He sent along a painted 'Mech as a peace offering, and Joseph, the bloke from the game, passed it along. It was much appreciated, and the chance to talk about the game after I'd cooled down a bit was almost as good. CGL seems to like to structure these things like the fiction says they should be, which I can respect, much as single-elimination stings. Apparently there is talk about upping the Battle Value next year to allow Medium 'mechs if there's going to be water on the board. I suggested having a second table already set up and sending downed mechs over there to continue playing, even if they're not eligible for the win, just to keep people from feeling like their time is wasted, and apparently someone in the Powers That Be dug that idea, so maybe it'll be in effect next year. Like I said, I can dig that they want the Grand Melee to be the way it is described in the events, but in tourneys for other systems, even if you know you're irrelevant after losing game 1, it's still fun to get to play the next few rounds.

GenCon 2010- Day 3

Day 3 was largely recovery from Day 2, with a hell of a lot of Malifaux thrown in for flavor. Slept in until about 2, which would be much more luxurious if I hadn't gone to bed at 7:30AM, and headed over to the convention center for a 4PM Malifaux tournament. Now, I must admit, that with some of the other big releases lately (WHFB8 in particular), I was NOT prepared for this tourney. I hadn't gotten a chance to play lately, and I had just skimmed the new book. The local "scene" (which pretty much consists of 4 of us playing occasionally), which I was dominating pretty handily, is missing a couple of the armies that can really give the Ortegas fits, apparently. Round 1 was against the new Ophelia Special Force, which is a Goblin army with a group of goblins dressed like the Ortegas. It's about as silly as it sounds, but damn if they aren't effective. There's a couple of bizarre things going on there (like an ability that can deal damage through solid brick walls with no save or attack roll), but the hardest for me to deal with was the sheer number of models. Malifaux does not have a system for balancing unequal numbers of activations like Battletech does, so being outnumbered three to one just means that you have to show your hand earlier. I got smoked pretty badly.

Round 2 was against a Leveticus warband. He is a seriously weird dude. His entire warband is designed around him actually dying over and over again, and getting put back on the table at the end of each turn. Unfortunately for my opponent, he drew the Slaughter objective, which requires you to kill more Soulstones worth of models than your opponent, and a Master kill is worth 10ss. One of my Schemes was "Family Justice", which requires me to kill 3 models with Perdita's Execute ability. I managed to achieve it on Leveticus alone, which along with a kill from Nino Ortega put him 40 points behind. Apparently because of our game, the design team is going to look at the rules for Leveticus in that context. Hilarious game, but due to secondary objectives, I lost it 2vp to 1.

Round 3 was against a Ramos warband. Playing against Leveticus showed off a lot of the model replacement shenanigans in the Malifaux rules- Ramos is built entirely around them. Combining Steampunk Arachnids into swarms, creating new ones entirely, summoning electrical constructs, the whole game was about weird mechanical things showing up and slowly crunching away at my army. When time was called, the game was pretty much a draw, but he had me dead to rights- lucky for me it was a slow bleed.

The terrain for the tournament was the prototypes of the new TerraClips terrain. It was, in a word, horrendous. Badly warping, with clips that were difficult to play over and were not holding buildings in place. Given Wyrd's attention to quality and the usual level of polish on WorldWorks's stuff, I was appalled. Rumors were rumbling around the tables of it being cancelled, of the designers being angry, etc. There's a posting up on the Wyrd site here: http://www.wyrd-games.net/node/98 Apparently they are delaying them until they get fixed. Hopefully they'll get it sorted out, since it's also the first time for WorldWorks selling a physical product. The art is pretty decent, but given the quality of the newer stuff in WorldWorks's fantasy line, I'll probably skip TerraClips- for what they're asking, a flat baseboard with a sewer printed on it is pretty weak.

I was impressed with the running of the event. Things proceeded pretty quickly, players were friendly, and Malifaux continues to surprise me with how crazy they can make the rules and still have them interact in convincing ways. I think I'll definitely be looking into the events next year.

GenCon 2010- Day 2

Friday was a LOOOOOONG one. There had been an Arcane Legions event that I'd wanted to go to, but it was supposedly sold out (found out 20 minutes after it started that it had in fact opened up, but too late), so we spent a lot of the afternoon wandering again. I spent a couple hours in the WoW TCG room- they are doing a weekend-long league that lets you play against anyone else in the league and get swag for playing. I played a bit against other starter-only players, had a pretty good time. I also ended up picking up a Dragon Dice starter and fooling around with that for a bit. Martha and I did a demo for WarGods of Aegyptus, which we were both very impressed with. With Greek armies on the horizon, I might be getting on that bus. It helps that they also have a beautiful Yeti army that Martha is eying. We wound up wandering around town for a little while, killing time getting ready for the big event of the day- the all-night Warmachine tournament.

Tournament-level Warmachine is an interesting animal. It's fast, insanely brutal, and played by a very particular class of gamer. The more I see of it, the less I want to play it. The setup for the tourney was pretty disorganized- we got there 15 minutes early and tried to get registered, and they told us to wait, which led to waiting in line and rushing through paperwork, annoyances that could've been saved if they'd just given us the signup form. There are apparently several different versions of the Killbox scenario floating around- I lost my first game because at this event, premeasuring the size of the Killbox wasn't allowed, and they started tracking it at turn 2 instead of turn 3. What really burns me is that the guy that got the free win off of me ended up winning best overall. There was a huge majority of Hordes players, and I think it really made a difference. Mk. II definitely improved on some of the inequities between Hordes and Warmachine, but I'm sure I was not the only player whose feat was utterly useless for several rounds (my matchups were Trollbloods, Rhulic Mercs, Trollbloods, and Trollbloods). Players bailing out because of the lateness of the hour led to me drawing a bye in the third round, but with the exception of the exceedingly pleasant gent that was playing Dwarves, the tournament was definitely not worth getting back to my hotel room at 7AM.

GenCon 2010- Day 1

So, since last year, liveblogging from the show floor didn't go so well, I'm taking a moment to collect my thoughts in my hotel room (plus, this keyboard is much nicer than my phone). Today was mostly wandering the vendor hall, plus a Battletech event that I was quite looking forward to (more on that later).

I haven't gotten to sit down and check out demos just yet, today was more scoping things out, and picking up the "got to have it" items. The new Malifaux book is quite lovely (Martha is reading it at the moment, so I haven't gotten all the details yet), and the Battletech Hexpack: Lakes and Rivers is a giant leap forwards from the crummy paper mapsheets included in the current starter box. There was a show special on starters for the WoW CCG, so I picked one up on a whim and played a game- it's a decent "post-Magic" game, not the sort of thing that I'm going to rush out and buy a case of, but it's kind of a fun thing to have kicking around for a lull in the show.

So about that Battletech event. Total bullshit. Apparently the full rules didn't get posted until a week ago on the Catalyst Games forums, which I had checked a few weeks ago. There was very little info on the GenCon registration site, beyond "bring a Clan Omnimech". No weight limits, BV totals, etc. So I happily went to work on my Summoner, ordered some decals, tinkered with different variants, until I was pretty sure I was set to go today. I even emailed the contact address listed on the GenCon website to make sure I had all the details. When I arrived, they had trouble even pointing me to the right place for my event (which was not the table with the sign for the event on it). Once I got there, I discovered that it was really just a qualifier for the actual Bloodname Trial that's going on tomorrow (and I couldn't find tickets for earlier, oddly). Everyone had to pick from a list of five light mechs, none of which I was even remotely familiar with. I know there is a segment of the BT-playing populace that really likes lights, but while it's fun to run around the battlefield 9 hexes at a time, I can't think of a single other thing that recommends them. With armor made of tissue paper, they become incredibly luck-driven. So anyway, after a 30-minute delay, since half the table didn't know the rules that had been added, so everyone had to pick mechs, we get started. Turn one, I advance (walking, not running...) into a river. My mech immediately trips, takes one point of damage, and the right torso floods with water, rendering everything in that section and the right arm inoperable. Turn 2, I manage to stand up, catch a flight of missiles in the chest, and a lucky center-torso crit causes another engine hit, and I'm out. Elapsed time: 45 minutes, 30 of which were waiting to pick a mech and get started. The program specified 8 HOURS, which meant that the whole experience cost me $16. Easily the worst experience I have ever had at a convention. I will very likely not be bothering with BT at GenCon again, unless CGL seriously gets their shit together.

Army Building and 8th Edition WHFB

I have held the book in my hands. It is very big, and full color, and overall, pretty nifty.

With that out of the way, a look at the new (Old?) army composition in WHFB8. It's been a source of a lot of rumors, a lot of "OMG the sky is falling", and rather a bit of wringing of hands. I didn't get a long look at the book today, but I wanted to at least see precisely what the rules are on composition, so I can start to prepare my army for the new book.

It's pretty simple. >25% for Core, <25% each for Lords, Heroes, and Rares, <50% for Specials, and no more than 2 duplicate Rare units and 3 duplicate Special units.

For someone who cut their square-base teeth on WHFB5, this isn't terribly strange, but if you've only played 6th Edition and later, it's going to take a little bit of getting used to. So what's it mean for the game?

-Points are important, not unit counts. I think this may be one of the biggest (and best) changes for high-cost, elite Core units. No more cheapo filler units to take up the third core slot, if you have a couple of big smashy ranked units that add up to 500pts (in a 2k game), you're all set.

-The sky is not falling for heroes. This is important to note, especially as compared to many of the rumors. Lords get their own points allotment, with plenty of room to stretch their legs. Monstrous mounts are going to get relegated to the larger games, but it also means that Lords are available in ALL GAMES. Now stop, read that again, and make sure that you're not drinking anything while you do it. 1000 point game? You can have a 250 point Lord running your army. Granted, 250 points isn't going to get you a Chaos Lord with all the trimmings, but it does mean that in smaller games, armies with less smashy Lord choices will have a good shot at going toe to toe with some of the more punishing Hero choices, like in the Warriors of Chaos book.

-Unit spam is not completely gone. There was a lot of scuttlebutt going around about stiff penalties for running multiples of the same unit. It's just not true. The book clearly specifies that "2 for 1" choices still count as a single pick, and 3 of the same Special is still going to be quite a few of the same models. That said, the limit does reward running two larger units of a Rare slot, rather than running seven or eight tiny ones, so it does nip a few of the more ridiculous hypothetical builds from the rumor phase in the bud.

I sat down and wrote out a new Dwarf list over my lunch today, and it's actually legal in both editions of the rules. I suspect most people that were running relatively even-handed armies are going to be in a similar position. More Lord or Rare focused forces might be in for a little reorganization, but from what I've looked at for the rules for close combat, I suspect that most of those armies are going to be wanting to take a few more skeletons/warriors/spearmen anyway. I don't envy the guys that have to rewrite the validation rules for Army Builder, but on the whole, I think it's a strong step towards rebalancing things for the better.

It's been a while...

So, while doing the site redesign with Blogger's neat-o new layout tool, I kept on having the last update from November of last year staring at me. It's got a way of making a guy want to get something done. So here's the "state of the steamwerks" since then.

-Repainted my table! I finally got around to both reinforcing the thing (no more bending!) and getting a fresh coat of paint on it. Now I can actually be reasonably sure my terrain will match the board, and I've got a hell of a lot of Tausept Ochre and Bleached Bone look-alike latex paint.

-Painted a bunch of terrain. With the table repaint, I wanted to get the rest of the terrain set shipshape. In addition to the stuff that's already showed up on the blog, now there's two Gaming Hills, a Temple of Skulls, some assorted small ruins, and the Bastion properly finished, plus the Battlescape and a couple of forests at least partially finished.

-Reorganized my gaming space. This one is still a work in progress. I moved the desk out, and moved in another bookshelf and Martha's display cabinet, along with adding some new terrain shelving. Still plowing through organizing the (probably thousands) minis in boxes that let me actually find things, but I'm closer to having a more usable space than I have been in a while.

-Lost my camera. This one is the main reason I haven't been posting- my phone just doesn't take the quality of pictures that I would like. There is some suspicion about the timing of it, but the main point is that I just don't know where the damn thing is.

-Played a hell of a lot of Xbox. This is one of those cyclical hobby things... With a lot of people being busy around the last big 40K release (Battle Missions), I just didn't end up doing as much tabletop gaming as usual. That said, Splinter Cell: Conviction, and Halo3: ODST were not a bad way to kill a few weeks.

So. Moving forward. Right now, I've got some decent work done on my Romans for WAB, and with the 2.0 rulebook out, it's getting some good play. I've been getting back into painting my Vostroyans, after some disappointment with the codex. What do you folks want to read? More battle reports? Painting logs? Philosophical musings about the state of rules and players? Let me know what you think!